scrcpy

This application provides display and control of Android devices connected on USB. It does not require any root access. It works on GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac OS.

Requirements

The Android part requires at least API 21 (Android 5.0).

You need adb (recent enough so that adb reverse is implemented, it works with 1.0.36). It is available in the Android SDK platform tools, on packaged in your distribution (android-adb-tools).

On Windows, just download the platform-tools and extract the following files to a directory accessible from your PATH:

• adb.exe
• AdbWinApi.dll
• AdbWinUsbApi.dll

Make sure you enabled adb debugging on your device(s).

The client requires FFmpeg and LibSDL2.

Build and install

System-specific steps

Linux

Install the required packages from your package manager (here, for Debian):

# runtime dependencies
sudo apt install ffmpeg libsdl2-2.0.0

# build dependencies
sudo apt install make gcc openjdk-8-jdk pkg-config meson zip \
                 libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libavutil-dev \
                 libsdl2-dev

Windows

For Windows, for simplicity, a prebuilt archive with all the dependencies (including adb) is available:

• scrcpy-windows-with-deps-v1.0.zip.
  (SHA-256: bc4bf32600e8548cdce490f94bed5dcba0006cdd38aff95748972e5d9877dd62)

(It's just a portable version including dll copied from MSYS2.)

Instead, you may want to build it manually. You need MSYS2 to build the project. From an MSYS2 terminal, install the required packages:

# runtime dependencies
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-SDL2 \
          mingw-w64-x86_64-ffmpeg

# build dependencies
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-make \
          mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc \
          mingw-w64-x86_64-pkg-config \
          mingw-w64-x86_64-meson \
          zip

Java (>= 7) is not available in MSYS2, so if you plan to build the server, install it manually and make it available from the PATH:

export PATH="$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH"

Mac OS

Use Homebrew to install the packages:

# runtime dependencies
brew install sdl2 ffmpeg

# build dependencies
brew install gcc pkg-config meson zip

Java (>= 7) is not available in Homebrew, so if you plan to build the server, install it manually and make it available from the PATH:

export PATH="$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH"

Common steps

Install the Android SDK (Android Studio), and set ANDROID_HOME to its directory. For example:

export ANDROID_HOME=~/android/sdk

Then, build scrcpy:

meson x --buildtype release --strip -Db_lto=true
cd x
ninja

You can test it from here:

ninja run

Or you can install it on the system:

sudo ninja install    # without sudo on Windows

This installs two files:

• /usr/local/bin/scrcpy
• /usr/local/share/scrcpy/scrcpy-server.jar

Just remove them to "uninstall" the application.

Prebuilt server

Since the server binary, that will be pushed to the Android device, does not depend on your system and architecture, you may want to use the prebuilt binary instead:

• scrcpy-server-v1.0.jar.
  (SHA-256: b573b06a6072476b85b6308e3ad189f2665ad5be4f8ca3a6b9ec81d64df20558)

In that case, the build does not require Java or the Android SDK.

Download the prebuilt server somewhere, and specify its path during the Meson configuration:

meson x --buildtype release --strip -Db_lto=true \
    -Dprebuilt_server=/path/to/scrcpy-server.jar
cd x
ninja
sudo ninja install

Run

At runtime, adb must be accessible from your PATH.

If everything is ok, just plug an Android device, and execute:

scrcpy

It accepts command-line arguments, listed by:

scrcpy --help

For example, to decrease video bitrate to 2Mbps (default is 8Mbps):

scrcpy -b 2M

To limit the video dimensions (e.g. if the device is 2540×1440, but the host screen is smaller, or cannot decode such a high definition):

scrcpy -m 1024

If several devices are listed in adb devices, you must specify the serial:

scrcpy -s 0123456789abcdef

Shortcuts

Why scrcpy?

A colleague challenged me to find a name as unpronounceable as gnirehtet.

strcpy copies a string; scrcpy copies a screen.

Developers

Read the developers page.

Licence

Copyright (C) 2018 Genymobile

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.

Article

• Introducing scrcpy